Friday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Friday

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8
May 15

Last day of class

Last two classes of the term today. I gave a quiz consisting of when their finals were due and so on, the traditional end-of-term easy few points. I gave my not-at-all famous end-of-term speech. The brain is like any other muscle, I say, and you must use it. In our case, write. Write for publication. Write for yourself. Just write. Writers write.

There are a few other points in that speech. Thank you for your patience, I hope you’ve learned as much as I have. (I always learn a lot, even as the person leading the room.) Deadlines matter, I remind them. And I remind them again that it is OK to be passionate about where their interests are taking them, and so on.

In the second class a student pulled up Boys II Men and I tried to hit the back post of the song with the speech.

I forgot about the last chorus and missed the post.

But the speech is good.

Afterward, as I was wrapping up still more grading and various on-campus errands I ran into one of our students who is leaving us at the end of this term. He was there with his father. The student gave me a hug and introduced me to his dad. That’s not a bad way to wrap up classes.

And I got home just in time to shoot this from the car, hustling as I was to the ballgame. There’s nothing quite so nice as a good sunset on the plain. This blurry, out of the car window, cell phone shot isn’t representative of that, but the feeling of being home can’t be described in words or pictures anyway:

At baseball, it was time for rally sunglasses. Almost everyone in our section participated:

Shame the rally sunglasses didn’t work. Ah well. Get ’em tomorrow.

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1
May 15

Commercials and fried chicken

Grading, grading and classes. I graded at lunch today, reading over commercials that I’d had students write. Students really seem to dive into the idea of writing commercials. You see some incredible inventiveness and imagination leap off the page. As soon as they figure out how to channel that into non-fiction writing they’ll be on their way. And that’s why I like offering a commercial assignment.

I give them a 30-second spot to fill. You can have an unlimited budget to make your spot happen. The catches are that you have to advertise an existing product and the people that appear in your commercial have to be alive — no Moses or Marilyn Monroe, and they can’t work for the competition.

And in classes today we started the slog toward finals.

I saw this this afternoon.

It was pointing to a tree in the quad, upon which a great deal of random art had been displayed. I had to go to the building in the background to handle a small accounting matter. I met a lady there who summed up two of my Samford themes. Seems she’s counting the days until her second child’s graduation and wedding. She did not look like a woman old enough to be marrying off a second kid, let alone by the grandmother of three. And, yet, there she was. Being around college students keeps you young.

The other thing was the great happiness the lady possessed. I’m sure it was really about the fine weather or that her daughter will soon be married — outdoors, with kilts! — and that the bride and groom will be moving into the same neighborhood.

“I’m getting my baby back,” she said.

It probably had to do with some of those things. Or that it was almost quitting time on Friday. But here was an account who sits in a cube and crunches numbers and had a smile that would have pointed its own way to that tree in the quad.

Samford is pretty special that way. In all of my years here I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t pleased about the opportunity to be a part of it. How many of the jobs you’ve had in your career can offer you that as a perk?

And, now, meatballs and the rest of the NFL Draft.

Have a great weekend. Just remember, the next time you see a commercial, it started because a former student was inspired somewhere along the way. And if they turn Marilyn Monroe into a hologram for the spot, don’t tell my students.

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24
Apr 15

A tiger of a start to the weekend

The life of a costume character is pretty weird, if you think about it.

The life of a costume character is pretty good, if you think about it.

That all started because she pointed out that Aubie seemed to have some lipstick on his fur. He had something pink staining the mouth area. There was also something with a light peach shade. Who knows where it all comes from, girls, kids, cotton candy, a comic bit he did, the random impulsive smooches that a costume character steals.

Two classes today on broadcast scripts. That meant two more class preps and will somehow double the stack of papers I need to grade.

Ran late getting off of campus, but that just let me run into Katie, an old Crimson editor I worked with a few years ago. She has a photography business now. She was one of those you never worried about too much, good things were always in her reach.

We went to a cookout after the game and shot the breeze with a half dozen friends. Had a great time of it, too. Probably because of the food, which was pretty incredible. No one thought to bring any bowls or spoons for the beans, so they stayed on the grill, but the chicken and the deer were terrific. The company was great, too. I bet the beans would have been delicious.

Aubie didn’t show up at the cookout, but he could have and he would have been well fed.

The life of a costume character is pretty good, if you think about it.

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17
Apr 15

A quick note on a busy, and slow, Friday

A full and busy day. Didn’t get home until 9 p.m. and there was baseball after that.

Led one class on data gathering. We talked about 990 forms and financial statements and online resources and text references and digging up story ideas from that sort of source material.

There was another class where we discussed broadcast writing and radio scripts.

Then I sat in on a bunch of interviews and all of that made the afternoon race by.

Which got a lot slower as soon as I got on the road. Two hours stuck behind this scene this evening:

It had been there for four hours before I got there and they weren’t close to having the roadway cleared by the time I inched through it.

At one point both lanes were closed, so there was a detour. And between the backup on the interstate, the other direction and the detour, they had 12 more wrecks. And one lane was shut down for more than eight hours.

A great big, rainy mess then. Hope everyone was OK — there was one injury reported — and that we all keep our sense of perspective while we’re stuck in a bad day of traffic.

Then baseball with friends. And now, I’m going to go fall asleep — pretty quickly, I’d imagine.

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10
Apr 15

Another day at SSCA

Here is a panel you missed this morning. We were, I think, both entertaining and thoughtful. It was both theoretic and nostalgic. And almost all of the examples that came out of the panel were tales that started with some dystopian or post-apocalyptic backstory, which I found to be interesting. Just read the description, and imagine you were there:

It led to this quote, from our friend and co-panelist Dr. Brian Brantley, which was spot on:

And I don’t even like zombie films. Or mobster films. I think they’re kind of the same, actually.

I also chaired a panel on politics and sat in on another one where The Yankee presented, and caught a fourth session elsewhere, as well. It was a good day at the conference.

We have friends here in Tampa — Jenni, with whom we ran the Augusta half-Ironman last year and her husband, Gavin, who flies rockets and works for the county. That sounds like he flies rockets for the county, and I think he would appreciate that dangling gerund, so I’ll just leave it as is They took us here:

They took us not knowing we’ve had lunch at one of their cafes for two days in a row. That’s OK. We’re going back there again tomorrow.

The neon side overhead:

Across the street, the local branch of “My bank is more patriotic than your bank.”

Inside the restaurant, I enjoyed the roast pork “a la Cubana.” I even enjoyed the plantains, and I don’t even like plantain. Gavin, meanwhile, ordered the flaming steak. That was a first for me. He said it was delicious:

The restaurant has been around for more than a century, aimed at the working man, but has evolved somewhat over the decades. It is still a family-owned place. The menu is covered in their history. This is one of the best stories I’ve read in a menu (and I always read the stories in a menu):

Outside and around the corner, here are the six generations of that family who poured their lives into the place:

The whole block, it seemed, was dressed up in the style. I wonder what happens to those tiles when the seventh generation comes along.